IL State Contest Winner

Another Albergo Walks Away with 1st Place!

Local 130’s Anthony James “T.J.” Albergo has won the COTE/State Apprentice Contest. The 4th-year apprentice, who works for Great Lakes Plumbing & Heating Co., took first place in the 3-day competition on March 17-19, in Mokena, IL. He was the best of six plumbers from UA local unions in Illinois.

How did the competition at this level compare with Local 130 contest he won in June, 2009 as a 3rd-year apprentice? “It was definitely tougher,” he admitted. “This time you weren’t competing in your home court, so the atmosphere was different.” The apprentices he faced were strong competitors, he recalled, whose techniques seemed to differ. T.J. said he likes to start by looking at the drawing and doing all the math before building the project. Others might start building right away, adapting things as they went and sometimes taking certain things apart and rebuilding them.

The first day of the contest was largely devoted to bookwork. There were tests on general knowledge of the trade and plumbing codes and an isometric drawing to complete. The little time left in Day 1 was used to build a PVC project. The following two days were strictly hands on. They tested the apprentices’ skills in brazing, welding, rigging and joining copper pipe.

T.J. said he had a lot of people to thank for bringing him to the level he is now at as an apprentice plumber. Besides his instructors at Local 130, he said, “I’ve been fortunate to work under some really good plumbers at Great Lakes Plumbing & Heating.” (His general superintendent is John Reidy.) “I have benefited from the people I’ve worked with and under, and have used their ideas over and over,” he said. What’s more, the apprentice competitions themselves present huge learning opportunities, he added. “I don’t know if people realize the ideas and knowledge that is exchanged during these events,” he said. Everyone you meet, from the apprentices to the judges, has useful suggestions to offer.

T.J., who is 21, became a Local 130 apprentice in June 2006 not more than a couple days after his graduation from Elk Grove Village High School. He is the newest addition in the line of Albergos in Local 130. They include an uncle, two cousins, his father, Scott, a plumber for the University of Illinois-Chicago, and his grandfather, Joe Albergo, a retired day school instructor.

There is no one from whom T.J. learned more than from his grandfather, Joe, and no one who was more excited about his achievement in the state competition. For the grandfather, it was history repeating itself, seeing his grandson win the same apprentice competition in which he competed in — and won — exactly 50 years ago! T.J. said his grandfather was the first person he called after the conclusion of the contest. “He asked me how it went. I just told him I did my best. Then I added that I won it. He went nuts! It was an awesome feeling,” he said.